Does Pre-Medical ‘Voluntourism’ Improve the Health of Communities Abroad?

Medical voluntourism involves medically untrained individuals travelling to a community abroad to set up health education workshops, complete observational work or even basic clinical tasks. Often, these volunteers are students who are applying to medical school and are seeking an international clinical experience. Although the ethics of global-short-term medical outreach by medical school students and health professionals has been examined, the ethical implications of international pre-medical volunteer experiences have not been well described. This article is primarily concerned with medically-untrained individuals’ increased scope of practice in international healthcare settings. Specifically, this brief investigation asks: is the use of medically unskilled volunteers for clinical tasks in the developing world ethical? Ultimately, this analysis does not suggest that pre-medical students should avoid engaging with health disparities abroad, but rather that it is necessary to actively question how healthcare-related volunteering abroad is carried out.